I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: KAWABATA MAKOTO [河端一]–Sunday Morning (1978-83).

Recently, Kawabata Makoto [河端一], mastermind behind Acid Mothers Temple, revealed a new bandcamp site for some newer solo recordings.

This is Kawabata’s first musique concrète works. He played 2 cassette decks, a half-broken radio cassette-corder, tapes of field recordings and something else and a synthesizer.

This album has been reissued on CD-R as a part of “Kawabata Makoto’s Early Works 1978-1983 : Learning From The Past – R.E.P. Reissue Series vol.1” (11CD-Rs + 1 CD) box set in 2012.

There are two parts.  Part 1 is 24 min.  It sounds like short wave radio with lots of static. It’s a very mechanical, earthy sound which by the middle feels like a vacuum cleaner.  This one was particularly headache inducing.

Part 2 is 21 minutes long and feels a bit more musical with tape sounds and synthesizers but all under a gauze of hiss and static. There are musical notes –ringing harp-like notes buried beneath the fuzz–and echoing vocals.  At around 18 minutes the piece slows down with thumping “drums” that slow the pace.

These first two releases are very abstract.

[READ: June 9, 2020] “Breaking Stride”

This issue of the New Yorker has four one page essays called “Close Encounters.”  Since I like all of the authors, I was looking forward to reading them all.

This piece is fascinating to me because of two things.  The first is that Matthew Klam and his oldest friend managed to stay reasonably good friends for all of their lives.   And second because both of them went on to be creative.

In 1978 Matthew and David were in eighth grade.  They are not particularly popular but they both love Steve martin’s Let’s Get Small (this is right out of Freaks and Geeks).

They have memorable moments in ninth grade and tenth grade (a disastrous prom–why did they go as sophomores?).  In eleventh grade they have busboy jobs together and the staff hates them.

Most interesting?  In twelfth grade, they had a humor class.  Really?  How fun!  But Steve martin didn’t go over as well in 1982.

The first betrayal came in college when Dave went to a good school and Matthew went to an “underfunded state school.”  But they worked together that summer and Dave plays a tape of his radio show in which he dedicated a song to Matthew.

Matthew sends him short stories.  Dave replies with TV scripts.  Dave moves to L.A. to try to get into TV.  Matthew writes a story with an obnoxious older brother named Dave.  A minor betrayal.

In New York City, Matthew sees ads for a TV show that Dave created (it is gone after two seasons).

They don’t talk much, and yet Dave visited in January.  Sometimes as adults that’s the best you can do.